links i love

Starting out a new month with another post piling together some of my favorite blog posts (and YouTube videos!) of this month! Seeing how these posts shift in the content they focus on most is so interesting to me to see how what I’m reading, seeing, and watching develops and changes over time.

Beauty Things

Thirteen Thoughts did a great post on being more mindful with her beauty spending and ways to react to all of those things that keep us buying more and more (but it’s pretty!!!). I have been seeing a lot more of a movement toward being mindful with consuming beauty products and hoarding thousands of dollars of products that go unused. It’s refreshing to see declutters, shop my stash posts, and reading about people’s no-buys!

From Roses always has amazing content: photos are gorgeous, words well written and topics always interesting. For a beauty lover like me I can get caught up in saving the best products for a special occasion. But whenever I reach that special occasion I’m always scared to use a new product without knowing how it will perform! So no more! From now on I’m using what I have right now! Her post on this was great to see with specific products she’s stopped saving and some reasons to stop!

I’m always trying to keep on top of my makeup collection, from passing things on to friends and family to tossing out expired products. Over the past few months I’ve gotten good at not buying makeup and using what I’ve got but just yesterday I filled a massive cardboard box with duplicate products (extra powders, lip balms, hairspray and body products). This post from Lily Pebbles was another reminder to use up what I’ve got!

Travel and Lifestyle

Mykonos is such a beautiful place and I love seeing bloggers document their vacations to the beautiful city. What Olivia Did is one of the prettiest blogs out there with the light pink and fun fonts that make this post stand out from the sea of Mykonos coverage. The photos are gorgeous and the yellow dress is stunning on Olivia, definitely a post worth scrolling through.

I actually love following home blogs and blogs that show off cool home decor and Lauren Conrad has a post on such a cool blogger home with beautiful natural light and creamy and welcoming colors. I absolutely love seeing photos of studios, small homes, and apartments on my feed. It gets me excited for my sure destiny of having to make a small place work for the next few years in and out of college.

Fashion Slave did a super refreshing take on body confidence and why she’s never writing about it again. This is one of those posts that’s a bit shocking to see coming up on my feed because it’s so different from every other post about body confidence but honestly, it’s amazing to see a new view and a more personal experience with this. Definitely a must read!

I’ve been wanting to do some sort of challenge on a few different life topics (food, reading, creativity, blogging, coding, etc) and I just came upon this post by Zen Habits which made a perfectly laid out reading challenge for me to follow. Instead of doing this for a month, I’ll do 7 days of reading for 30 minutes a day. By the end of this I’ll have finished my new book and hopefully gotten deep into a second. As soon as I finish this post I’ll be pulling out my new book (Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan) and reading for 30 minutes uninterrupted and I can’t wait.

A Few YouTube Videos

This month I got very into watercolors. I’ve always loved them but I’ve never been that good at them so I thought I’d try to find a “Bob Ross of watercolors” and that’s exactly what I found. This man has great videos of him doing his watercolor paintings and I’ve loved painting along with them! His channel is called The Mind of Watercolor and I highly recommend it if you’re a beginner or enjoy watching videos like this.

Another watercolor video is this one that shows how to make flowers that look just like prints super easily and quickly! The best part of these is that the more imperfect, the better they look!